.:Out of Chaos:.

This following is an snip from a chat board diatribe.... good one, so I asked if I could post it here... and yup... here it is


Dear Hal:

I honestly doubt if most folks in your country would
recognize what a really "Liberal Left" politician or
policy even looks like.

If you had ever had a liberal-left set of policies,
you would not have to worry about having to find, and
pay for, basic medical insurance for yourself, or have
about 25% of the population of your country, the
wealthiest in the world, with no health care. The
rest of the world, which may not matter in your books,
sees this as a complete disgrace. What on earth have
you all been working for? What does it mean to the
non-liberal-left to be civilized and cultured?

If you had a liberal-left set of policies or
politicians you would not now be mired in Iraq, with
the 2000th. child of greiving parents being sent home,
to somewhere in the USA, in a box.

If you had ever had a liberal left set of policies,
the NRA would have been laughed out of existance a
long, long time ago. Thousands of people, nay, tens
of thousands, would not have been killed with the
proliferation of guns to be found in the land of the
free. Gun manufacturers, such as would be
suffered to exist, would be responsible for the safe
use of their products. (Just like pharmaceuticals.)

If you had a liberal-left set of policies, the
government you presently enjoy would honour
international treaties signed by previous
administrations. This is presently not the case.

If you had a liberal-left set of policies, Hal, you
might find that your society is very different from
what it is presently. Some of the differences might
be great, some small, some grating, others uplifting.
Threre is no true cure-all, of course, but there are
sincere choices to be made about being a part of an
ever-increasingly-interdependent world.

Countries' National Anthems are instructive.

Canada's is bi-lingual, but ways different things in
each language. The English part is about carving a
home from an untamed wilderness, whilst the French
version extols a nation which cherishes each citizen
as valuable, and offers protection from external
threat.

Your fair country's anthem ends with "The land of the
free and home of the brave". Is it free from ??? or
free to ??? And the bravery?

You might find this article, from today's NY Times by
Thos. L. Friedman, interesting. It is a fake news
story, based on present facts.

martin in toronto

====================

Do As I Say, Not As I Do


By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Published: October 19, 2005

WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 (Iraq News Agency) - A delegation
of Iraqi judges and journalists abruptly left the U.S.
today, cutting short its visit to study the workings
of American democracy. A delegation spokesman said the
Iraqis were "bewildered" by some of the behavior of
the Bush administration and felt it was best to limit
their exposure to the U.S. system at this time, when
Iraq is taking its first baby steps toward democracy.

The lead Iraqi delegate, Muhammad Mithaqi, a noted
secular Sunni judge who had recently survived an
assassination attempt by Islamist radicals, said that
he was stunned when he heard President Bush telling
Republicans that one reason they should support
Harriet Miers for the U.S. Supreme Court was because
of "her religion." She is described as a devout
evangelical Christian.

Mithaqi said that after two years of being lectured to
by U.S. diplomats in Baghdad about the need to
separate "mosque from state" in the new Iraq, he was
also floored to read that the former Whitewater
prosecutor Kenneth Starr, now a law school dean, said
on the radio show of the conservative James Dobson
that Miers deserved support because she was "a very,
very strong Christian [who] should be a source of
great comfort and assistance to people in the
households of faith around the country."

"Now let me get this straight," Judge Mithaqi said.
"You are lecturing us about keeping religion out of
politics, and then your own president and conservative
legal scholars go and tell your public to endorse
Miers as a Supreme Court justice because she is an
evangelical Christian.

"How would you feel if you picked up your newspapers
next week and read that the president of Iraq
justified the appointment of an Iraqi Supreme Court
justice by telling Iraqis: 'Don't pay attention to his
lack of legal expertise. Pay attention to the fact
that he is a Muslim fundamentalist and prays at a
Saudi-funded Wahhabi mosque.' Is that the Iraq you
sent your sons to build and to die for? I don't think
so. We can't have our people exposed to such talk."

A fellow delegation member, Abdul Wahab al-Unfi, a
Shiite lawyer who walks with a limp today as a result
of torture in a Saddam prison, said he did not want to
spend another day in Washington after listening to the
Bush team defend its right to use torture in Iraq and
Afghanistan. Unfi said he was heartened by the fact
that the Senate voted 90 to 9 to ban U.S. torture of
military prisoners. But he said he was depressed by
reports that the White House might veto the bill
because of that amendment, which would ban "cruel,
inhuman or degrading" treatment of P.O.W.'s.

"I survived eight years of torture under Saddam," Unfi
said. "Virtually every extended family in Iraq has
someone who was tortured or killed in a Baathist
prison. Yet, already, more than 100 prisoners of war
have died in U.S. custody. How is that possible from
the greatest democracy in the world? There must be no
place for torture in the future Iraq. We are going
home now because I don't want our delegation corrupted
by all this American right-to-torture talk."

Finally, the delegation member Sahaf al-Sahafi, editor
of one of Iraq's new newspapers, said he wanted to go
home after watching a televised videoconference last
Thursday between soldiers in Iraq and President Bush.
The soldiers, 10 Americans and an Iraqi, were coached
by a Pentagon aide on how to respond to Mr. Bush.

"I had nightmares watching this," Sahafi said. "It was
right from the Saddam playbook. I was particularly
upset to hear the Iraqi sergeant major, Akeel Shakir
Nasser, tell Mr. Bush: 'Thank you very much for
everything. I like you.' It was exactly the kind of
staged encounter that Saddam used to have with his
troops."

Sahafi said he was also floored to see the U.S.
Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan agency
that works for Congress, declare that a Bush
administration contract that paid Armstrong Williams,
a supposedly independent commentator, to promote Mr.
Bush's No Child Left Behind policy constituted illegal
propaganda - an attempt by the government to buy good
press.

"Saddam bought and paid journalists all over the Arab
world," Sahafi said. "It makes me sick to see even a
drop of that in America."

By coincidence, the Iraqi delegates departed
Washington just as the Bush aide Karen Hughes returned
from the Middle East. Her trip was aimed at improving
America's image among Muslims by giving them a more
accurate view of America and President Bush. She said,
"The more they know about us, the more they will like
us."

(Yes, all of this is a fake news story. I just wish
that it weren't so true.)



martin in toronto

++++++++++++++++++++

might want to use it as I have fixed up the typos for you. Changed nothing
else.

Regards, and thanx for asking. If anyone wants to discuss with me, please
add my email (mallerstead@sympatico.ca)

martin aller-stead
www.aller-stead.com/martin

"Peace is not the absence of War,
but the absence of Fear,
which is the Presence of Justice"
-- Dr. Ursula Franklin